


Memento Mori

by domesticadventures



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Backstory, F/M, Gen, Headspace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 20:39:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3222707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domesticadventures/pseuds/domesticadventures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You bleed onto the floor and you can almost feel the minutes, the seconds, every last moment of your mortal life drip drip dripping away, sizzling into nothing in the fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memento Mori

Being on the rack has a way of poking holes in your memories.

They’re flayed along with your flesh, they become torn and frayed around the edges. You bleed onto the floor and you can almost feel the minutes, the seconds, every last moment of your mortal life drip drip dripping away, sizzling into nothing in the fire.

The first day you wake as a demon, the catalog of your past existence lingers on the edge of your consciousness, hovering there like dreams used to do when your alarm would startle you from sleep, waiting to slip into oblivion. You think you could probably piece together some sort of narrative, no matter how incoherent, if you spared it a few minutes of your attention. You spend long enough weighing the merits that by the time you’ve reached a decision, your life is already gone, too hazy and indistinct to recall in any sort of meaningful fashion.

Alistair hands you a knife.

Time to make some new memories.

\--

You inhabit the mind of your first vessel later, much, much later, and you know you’re not missing out.

You take her face and her voice and her name, twist and turn them to your own ends and leave her life behind. She’s awake the whole time and she screams her rage at you for it, curses the fact that once you let her go, she’s going to remember every bloody second of every horrible thing you’ve done wearing her face.

You wonder, sometimes, if you were ever so pitiful, if you ever cried and screamed and begged like she does, nearly incessantly. It makes it that much easier to convince yourself you weren’t. Makes it that much easier to justify keeping her around.

When her sister dies, you make sure she knows.

\--

You change bodies but keep the name that has somehow started to feel like your own, and when your new meatsuit begs for death, you let her go.

It feels less like mercy than like jealousy, a desperate bid for ownership of this body that will never truly belong to you.

\--

Every angel you meet can see your true face, can see what you’ve become, but there’s only one who looks at you like you’re beautiful.

When you kiss him, you think, _that’ll show you_.

And then he kisses you back.

The touch, the taste of him, the feel of his hands on your hair, lingers as you wait in the hallway, as you fight, as you flee, lingers as you clean yourself up, later, lingers for hours and then days and then weeks.

It even lingers after he’s dead.

\--

For a while, he forgets who you are, this angel who saw your true face and kept looking anyway. He smiles at you sometimes, and it’s soft and sweet, no heat or fury in it, and you suspect he’s not smiling at you, just at the mask you’re wearing.

And then he forgets about you entirely.

They all do, despite the help you’ve given them, they fucking _forget_ about you, and you’re thinking _goddamn unbelievable,_ you’re thinking _go to hell,_ you’re thinking _the last thing I’m going to do is help you._

But then he looks at you and he remembers, he holds your hand so gently, he gives you this look you almost recognize. You suspect he knows what it’s like to forget who you were on purpose.

“Why are you so sweet on me, Clarence?” you ask, as though you don’t already have your suspicions.

\--

It doesn’t even hurt when he guts you. It’s nothing compared to the last year, anyway. Mostly, it’s just annoying.

You’re not sure where demons go, when they’re killed this way. But you think, if you wake up anywhere at all, this time around, you’re going to try and live a life worth remembering.

 


End file.
